Tammy Jones, assistant professor of radiation science technology education, has been named director of the radiography program.

She replaces Connie Mitchell, who retired in August after 13 years as director and 42 years at UNMC.

"Tammy is an outstanding clinician and educator," said Kyle Meyer, Ph.D., senior associate dean of the School of Allied Health Professions. "She brings tremendous creativity and enthusiasm to an already outstanding program."

Jones has been the SAHP's teacher of the year twice and is the Nebraska Society of Radiologic Technologists' 2013 Technologist of the Year. She served most previously as the radiography program's clinical education coordinator and has been instrumental in coordinating the program's expansion to the University of Nebraska Kearney, set to occur in 2015.

Jones has her radiation science technology degree from UNMC, a master's from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and is currently pursuing her Ph.D.

She said she still remembers receiving her acceptance letter from UNMC in the spring of 1998. She was ecstatic.

She still remembers the anxiety and excitement of performing her first diagnostic image as a student. The significance of that image hit her -- what it meant to the patient. To the radiologist who read it, the physician who ordered it to find out more.

At UNMC, she was doing something for people who counted on her. At UNMC, she was part of a team.

She'd grown up in a small Nebraska farming community in which people counted on one another, and, in a way, at times it seemed as if everyone was on the same team.

"I had found my 'place,'" she said.

Now she's director of the program that helped her find her "place."

"I look forward to what lies ahead," she said.

It feels kind of like the day she got that letter. The one with the return address that said UNMC.